The spirit of Open Source was extended today with the news that a publishing company is paying royalties from each book they sell to the open source project it is written on.

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The spirit of Open Source was extended today with the news that a publishing company is paying royalties from each book they sell to the open source project it is written on.

Open Source is focused on providing users with software that is free to modify, redistribute and ultimately free to use. The nature of being Open Source means that projects have largely relied on the generosity and goodwill of an enthusiastic community in order to prosper. British publishing company Packt [http://www.PacktPub.com is responding to this need by choosing to allocate a portion of the revenues from each book they sell to the open source project the book is written on.

"It's great that Packt contributes financially to the OpenCms development through the book royalties" said Alexander Kandzior, creator of the OpenCms project, "It shows that they really care about the open source projects they publish on." OpenCms, a website content management system, is just one project that Packt have published on and subsequently paid royalties to.

"If these projects didn't exist, we wouldn't be able to publish, it's as simple as that" says Damian Carvill, marketing manager at Packt. "In the long term, we see ourselves and our readers as part of the Open Source ecosystem, providing sustainable revenue for the projects we publish on. Our aim at Packt is to establish publishing royalties as an essential part of the service and support business model that sustains Open Source"

The company has published on, and subsequently given to, a number of open source projects including eZ publish, Plone and phpMyAdmin. Marc Delisle from the phpMyAdmin project explains that amongst other things their support has "helped the team to be present at various conferences in order to promote phpMyAdmin."

Packt are publishing further books on open source projects throughout 2005 and their philosophy of paying royalties to these projects will continue. "This isnÂt a short term plan" Carvill explains, "weÂve set up Packt and included the support for Open Source as a central part of the business."